Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening PDF
Preview Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening
Musicking MUSIC / CULTURE A series from Wesleyan University Press Edited by George Lipsitz, Susan McClary, and Robert Walser My Music by Susan D. Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi, Charles Keil, and the Music in Daily Life Project Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music by Robert Walser Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West by Mark Slobin Upside Tour Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue by Johnny Otis Dissonant Identities: The Rock 'n'Roll Scene in Austin, Texas by Barry Shank Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America by Tricia Rose Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capitally Sarah Thornton Popular Music in Theory by Keith Negus Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures by Frances Aparicio Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology by Paul Theberge Voices in Bali: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal Music and Dance Theater by Edward Herbst A Thousand Honey Creeks Later: My Life in Music from Baste to Motown—and Beyond by Preston Love Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African American Music by Christopher Small Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening by Christopher Small Music, Society, Education by Christopher Small Singing Archaeology: Philip Glass's Akhnaten by John Richardson Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience by Harris M. Berger Music and Cinema edited by James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer (continued on page 231) CHRISTOPHER SMALL Musicking THE MEANINGS OF PERFORMING AND LISTENING WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Middletawn, Connecticut Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459 www.weslcyan.edu/wespress © 1998 by Christopher Small All rights reserved Originally produced in 1998 by Wesleyan/ University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755 CIP data appear at the end of the book Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 ISBNS for the paperback edition: ISBN-IB: 978-0-8195-2257-3 ISBN-IO: 0-8195-2257-0 Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. Contents Prelude: Music and Musicking i i. A Place for Hearing 19 2. A Thoroughly Contemporary Affair 30 3. Sharing with Strangers 39 Interlude i The Language of Gesture 50 4. A Separate World 64 5. A Humble Bow 75 6. Summoning Up the Dead Composer 87 Interlude 2 The Mother of All the Arts 94 7. Score and Parts no 8. Harmony, Heavenly Harmony 120 Interlude 3 Socially Constructed Meanings 130 9. An Art of the Theater 144 10. A Drama of Relationships 158 ii. A Vision of Order 169 12. What's Really Going On Here? 183 13. ^4 Solitary Flute Player 201 Postlude: Was It a Good Performance and How Do You Know? 207 Bibliography 223 Index 227 This page intentionally left blank Musicking This page intentionally left blank Prelude Music and Musicking In a concert hall, two thousand people settle in their seats, and an intense silence falls. A hundred musicians bring their instruments to the ready. The conductor raises his baton, and after a few moments the symphony begins. As the orchestra plays, each member of the audience sits alone, listening to the work of the great, dead, composer. In a supermarket, loudspeakers fill the big space with anodyne melodies that envelop customers, checkout clerks, shelf assistants and managers, uniting them in their common purpose of buying and selling. In a big stadium, fifty thousand voices cheer and fifty thousand pairs of hands applaud. A blaze of colored light and a crash of drums and amplified guitars greet the appearance onstage of the famous star of popular music, who is often heard on record and seen on video but whose presence here in the flesh is an experience of another kind. The noise is so great that the first few minutes of the performance are inaudible. A young man walks down a city street, his Walkman clamped across his ears, isolating him from his surroundings. Inside his head is an infinite space charged with music that only he can hear. A saxophonist finishes his improvised solo with a cascade of notes that ornament an old popular song. He wipes his forehead with a handkerchief and nods absently to acknowledge the applause of a hundred pairs of hands. The pianist takes up the tune. A church organist plays the first line of a familiar hymn tune, and the congregation begins to sing, a medley of voices in ragged unison. At an outdoor rally, with bodies erect and hands at the salute, fifty thou- sand men and women thunder out a patriotic song. The sounds they make rise toward the God whom they are imploring to make their country great. Others hear the singing and shiver with fear. Prelude / i
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